The fact is that the Republican Party can’t be dependent on working-class voters at the same time that it’s default economic agenda has little to say to them. If Trump has opened up the space for a conversation in the GOP about how to connect with these voters and their concerns, then his carnival show will have had some significant upside. If he goes down and the Republican political class carries on as if nothing had happened and conservative pundits who have twisted themselves into knots to justify Trump go back to hewing to the verities of the 1980s, nothing will have been gained except a more entertaining primary season than usual.

That’s a warning from the right to the right wing about Trump’s connection to the working class and the need for the conservative wing to address the grievances of the working class not just feed the rich and hope tax cuts are enough.

Donald Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters is something Democrats are going to have to grapple with if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee. We know that intuitively, and now Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has provided a more in-depth look at the challenge. The organization sent canvassers to talk to 1,689 people in white working-class communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The good news is that 53 percent of the people Working America talked to are undecided when it comes to presidential candidates. But there’s plenty of bad news:

Donald Trump was favored by more than a third of those who chose a candidate (38%), overwhelming all other Republican candidates (27% combined). Nearly the same number chose one of two Democratic candidates, Clinton (22%) or Sanders (12%).

While most of Trump’s support comes from the staunch Republican base, 1 in 4 Democrats who chose a candidate showed a preference for Trump. […]

Party loyalty did not determine candidate choice as much as expected. Of Trump partisans, 58% said they would support him even if he runs as an independent. Additionally, a small number of Trump supporters were considering a Democrat if Trump doesn’t end up on the ballot.

Good jobs/the economy, which is historically the priority concern of Working America constituents, remains the top issue among voters we talked with, at 27%, with homeland security and terrorism next (14%) and health care as the third most frequently cited priority (10%).

Immigration was the top issue for only 5% of all those canvassed, but for Trump supporters it was the third–most-important issue (cited by 14%), after good jobs/the economy (29%) and homeland security and terrorism (21%). Voters for whom immigration is the priority issue are often Trump partisans (48%), but overall, those who prioritize immigration are a relatively small number.
[snip]

Additionally, canvassers encountered people whose first choice was Trump and whose second choice was either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.

Want to know why a billionaire is a working class hero? Go to 538, that anti-Trump swamp of Nate Silver’s delusions, masked with numbers. But don’t read Silver’s tin plated “analysis”. Read the comments, like this one from someone called Warren Dew:

One big problem for Mr. Gang of Eight Rubio and “Act of Love” Bush, as well as even possible flip-flopper Cruz: After the first 4 primaries, the race moves to the South.

Why is immigration so important down here?

Let’s look at a local mill town: Its population was about 90% white, 10% black, and almost all blue-collar. The carpet mills employed most of the male population and quite a few females, and support industries, like restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, places that sold supplies that the mills used, etc. employed even more. As the mill had been around for about 30 years, most of the employees had slowly gained seniority, and their pay had increased; most earned between $15 to $25 per hour. The largest mill expanded about 10 years ago, but instead of directly hiring locals, it used temp services offering just barely over minimum wage. The town’s population began changing, first 5% immigrants, then 10%, until it peaked at 28% immigrants, who mostly speak spanish, require bi-lingual teachers in the schools, and haven’t assimilated into the local culture. In fact, the locals need to assimilate into theirs; many of the local restaurants closed, and mexican themed ones opened. Local markets have been replaced by conicerias. And every time the mills hired a new temp worker, they had a 50 something long-time worker train him, then found a reason to fire the older worker after 30 years on the job, or he was laid off, and they saved $10 per hour in wages. Meantime, the American worker had to either live off his savings, get an $8 per hour job at another mill thru the temp service, which is almost impossible when he is competing with young, healthy immigrants for the job, or draw unemployment while trying to find work at minimum wage as a cashier or fast food worker. After a brief transition, the local pot dealers (may they rest in peace; 2 were ruled suicides, one an unsolved murder when he was shot in the head, another left town after his wife’s head was blown off by an unknown assailant with a shotgun) were replaced with Los Zetas and El Chapo heroin and meth dealers, who don’t like each other very much. Then the Great Recession happened. A lot of the mills either closed or moved to China, and those jobs aren’t coming back. Now, there is this massive population of people who can’t speak english, have no jobs and nowhere to go, and are now depending on the people whose jobs they had taken for food stamps to feed their kids, government housing, and to pay the taxes to send their kids to school, while they continue to replace the older American workers who still have jobs at the mills that are still open.
Yes, there is a lot of anger and resentment among white (and black, for that matter) southern blue-collar workers. Establishment favorites Rubio and Bush will have a tough time getting the nomination, and Clinton has no chance of converting the South back to the Democrats, just due to that one issue. In fact, I wouldn’t be so sure that she can count on anything like the 93% of the black vote that Obama got. Most blacks work. Most are blue collar. And they have been hurt by immigration just as much as their white friends on the assembly line. I’m guessing that a real populist has a chance of converting 25% of the black vote to the Republican side.

Warren Dew The same thing is happening in NYC construction, illegals from China and Mexico are taking the formerly UNION construction jobs which paid well and used be done by white, black and Hispanic American citizens. NYC is a santuary city, it is an abomination that the Democrats in this city and President Obama allowed this to happen by not enforcing the borders and getting rid of E-Verify. All of this accelerated after the financial crisis in 2008, even though the market for multi-million dollar condominums in Manhattan had grown exponentially. The blue collar construction workers who lost their jobs to these illegals are made [sic] as hell. I don’t doubt that many of them like what Trump is saying about controlling the borders. We are fed up in New York. This is going on all over the country. Democrats have taken these blue collar voters for granted and thrown them under the bus in favor of illegal immigrants who use borrowed or fake social security numbers….

The Great GOP Realignment
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump may herald an historic working-class Republican revolt against the party establishment. [snip]

It’s easy to view this year’s Republican primary as a cult of personality and no more—the rise and fall of a colorful billionaire who stars in the greatest reality show on television. But what’s happening is much broader than Trump and Cruz. It’s an extension of a shift in Republican politics that’s been under way for several years. Although the media is portraying the outcome in Iowa as a repudiation of Trump, it’s better understood as a repudiation of the party establishment—just the latest in a series of uprisings dating to the 2010 election. At the congressional level, the GOP has already realigned itself to reflect this anger. Almost 60 percent of House Republicans were elected in 2010 or after. They’ve radicalized their party in Congress and driven out its establishment-minded speaker, John Boehner. [snip]

For all that the media fixated on Trump and Cruz, the Iowans I spoke to were more preoccupied with a litany of economic and cultural frustrations. The same complaints came up again and again—so did their antipathy toward their own party’s leaders in Washington, who, just about everyone agreed, had stopped listening to them entirely. “Out here in the cheap seats, those people are the ones that are our biggest enemy,” said Myron Brenner, 61, a heavy-equipment operator in Wallingford who caucused for Cruz. [snip]

While Trump didn’t prevail, his message did: Cruz, and even third-place finisher Marco Rubio, echoed the same dark themes of nativism, treachery, and corruption. Like Trump, Cruz presented himself as the savior of disaffected working-class Americans who are routinely sold out by a “Washington cartel” that encompasses the leaders of both parties. (In a sense, Cruz won by running as a pious Trump with a better turnout operation.) Rubio engineered his last-minute surge by abandoning the sunny “New American Century” pitch he’d been making for months and appealing to “all of us who feel out of place in our own country.” [snip]

As Patrick Buchanan, the former Nixon aide who won a 1996 New Hampshire primary upset by running as a populist proto-Trump, told the Washington Post: “The anger and alienation that were building then have reached critical mass now, when you see Bernie Sanders running neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire and Trump and Ted Cruz with a majority of Republican voters. Not to put too fine a point on it, the revolution is at hand.”

The question now is what effect this revolution will have on the Republican Party. [snip]

But a Republican electorate increasingly composed of working-class white voters who suffer disproportionately from stagnant wages and dim prospects appears to have lost faith in party leaders more interested in pursuing high-end income tax cuts and immigration reform. Given the political and economic climate, history offers an intriguing framework for what could happen next.

In 1955 the famed political scientist V.O. Key published “A Theory of Critical Elections,” an article popularizing the idea that certain elections in American history were more meaningful than the rest because “the decisive results of the voting reveal a sharp alteration of the pre-existing cleavage within the electorate.” This became known as realignment theory. Realigning elections, Key believed, create “sharp and durable” changes in the polity that can last for decades.

American historians generally see five or six elections as realigning: 1800, when Thomas Jefferson’s victory crippled the Federalist Party and shifted power from the North to the South; 1828, when Andrew Jackson’s win gave rise to the two-party system and two decades of Democratic control; 1860, when Abraham Lincoln’s election marked the ascendancy of the Republican Party and the secessionist forces that led to the Civil War; 1896, when William McKinley and a new urban political order were swept into power by a depression and industrialization; and 1932, during the Great Depression, when Franklin Roosevelt’s triumph marked the beginning of three decades of Democratic dominance. Some historians argue that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory, primed by the stagflation of the 1970s, was also realigning. [snip]

Both of the necessary preconditions for a realignment are present. The Great Recession of 2007-09 supplied the catalytic societal trauma: Pew Research Center data show Republican anger at Washington spiked before the 2010 election and has never fallen. And no one who’s turned on a television or attended a Republican rally can doubt for a minute that attachment to party leaders is at a low ebb.

Big “realignment” elections are rare. 2016 might be a big one. Obama destroyed the Democratic Party of FDR. The voters of the now defunct party are looking for a home. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, as appears likely, be prepared to hear the word “realignment” in places other than here.

Saturday’s GOP debate has pretty much confirmed that Donald J. Trump will win the Granite State. After that victory, there will be another victory in South Carolina. After that victory piled on victory, the Super Tuesday victories throughout the South, loom.

Donald J. Trump will win in New Hampshire after the tainted loss in Iowa. For the working class, after so many losses economically and culturally, they won’t be tired of winning. The working class will cheer as win after win is scored.

The working class will applaud their working class hero, Donald J. Trump, billionaire.

Admin: New Hampshire is no Iowa. They are not gadflies. And they do not like Snake Oil Salesmen.
—

“They’re professional voters,” said a campaign operative at dinner. No, it is more than that. It is more like, “We may be a field hospital, we may be high, we may be damaged by the collapse of the American culture, we may be the prime victims of deindustrialization, but we are: citizens. And we do our job.”

The deck chairs on the Titanic get reshuffled, maybe. It’s too late. We don’t think any of this is of any consequence. It does show we have been correct in our scathing critiques of the embarrassment called Hillary2016. Only if Joel Benenson, Jennifer Palmieri, Mook, and the Obamaroids like Tommy Vietor are pushed out will this have any meaning:

‘The Clintons are not happy, and have been letting all of us know that,’ one Democrat says.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are so dissatisfied with their campaign’s messaging and digital operations they are considering staffing and strategy changes after what’s expected to be a loss in Tuesday’s primary here, according to a half-dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Clintons — stung by her narrow victory in Iowa — had been planning to reassess staffing at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters after the first four primaries, but the Clintons have become increasingly caustic in their criticism of aides and demanded the reassessment sooner, a source told POLITICO. [snip]

It’s not clear if that will happen again, but several people close to the situation said Clinton would be loathe to fire anyone outright and more inclined to add new staff.

“The Clintons are not happy, and have been letting all of us know that,” said one Democratic official who speaks regularly to both. “The idea is that we need a more forward-looking message, for the primary – but also for the general election too… There’s no sense of panic, but there is an urgency to fix these problems right now.”

Ultimately, the disorganization is the candidate’s own decision-making, which lurches from hands-off delegation in times of success to hands-around-the-throat micromanagement when things go south.

At the heart of problem this time, staffers, donors and Clinton-allied operatives say, was the Clinton’s decision not to appoint a single empowered chief strategist – a role the forceful but controversial Mark Penn played in 2008 – and disperse decision-making responsibility to a sprawling team with fuzzy lines of authority.

“There’s nobody sitting in the middle of this empowered to create a message and implement it,” said one former Obama 2008 aide. “They are kind of rudderless… occasionally Hillary grabs the rudder, but until recently she was not that interested in [working on messaging]… Look, she going to be the nominee, but she’s not going to get any style points and if she isn’t careful she is going to be a wounded nominee. And they better worked this shit out fast because who ever the Republicans pick is going to be 29 times tougher than Bernie.”

The focus of their dissatisfaction in recent days is the campaign’s top pollster and strategist Joel Benenson, whom one Clinton insider described as being “on thin ice,” as the former first couple vented its frustrations about messaging following Clinton’s uncomfortably close 0.25 percent win in last week’s caucuses. Benenson, multiple staffers and operatives say, has been equally frustrated with the Clintons’ habit of tapping a rolling cast of about a dozen outside advisers – who often have the candidate’s ear outside the official channels of communication.

The result is a muddled all-the-above messaging strategy that emphasizes different messages – and mountains of arcane policy proposals – in stark contrast to Bernie Sanders’ punchy and relentless messaging on income inequality.

“He’s a good pollster, and they promised him a lot more authority… but, you know, we are talking abut the Clintons,” said one veteran operative who acts as a surrogate with the campaign. [snip]

In recent days, Hillary Clinton has tasked her campaign manager Robbie Mook – an expert at field organizing who commands the nearly unanimous loyalty of his staff – to expand his role from primary-and-caucus-state ground game logistics to messaging, with an additional emphasis on beefing up the campaign’s underperforming digital operation, which is seen as a key to challenging Sanders’ primacy with Democrats under 30.

The pressure on Mook comes at a time of what was arguably his greatest triumph: The 35-year-old campaign manager ran, what was by all accounts, a first-rate ground operation in the caucuses that maximized Clinton’s voter turnout in rural areas and among older voters — an effort that was barely able to beat back the overwhelming support the Vermont socialist senator got on Iowa’s college campuses and among the state’s cadre of progressive voters.

Moreover, several staffers told POLITICO Mook’s data and analytics operation was so well run, he was able to tell Clinton herself that she had won — even as the networks were declaring the race too close to call. “Get over to the hotel now!” he told the former secretary of state, according one aide who was at campaign headquarters on caucus night. “We need to beat Bernie!” — a mad rush to declare victory before Sanders took the stage to declare the contest a draw. Eight years ago, Mook played the same role when he ordered then Sen. Clinton to declare victory in the Indiana primary over Barack Obama — despite network projections that she might lose the state.

As the new year began, Clinton operatives were eager to take credit for the lack of internal drama; many credited Mook and the loyalty he inspires among his staffers with creating a leak-proof and seemingly functional team — there had been no stories chronicling the internal turmoil, split factions, public spats and overhauls that defined Clinton’s dysfunctional 2008 campaign team.

But from the beginning, there have been deeper issues simmering within the cheerfully-decorated Brooklyn headquarters — and much of that had to do with a disconnect between the candidate and her campaign. Over the summer while her campaign was bogged down in the email controversy, Clinton was deeply frustrated with her own staff, and vice versa. The candidate blamed her team for not getting her out of the mess quickly, and her team blamed Clinton for being stubbornly unwilling to take the advice of campaign chairman John Podesta and others to apologize, turn over her server, and move on. The entire experience made her a deeply vulnerable frontrunner out of the gate, and underscored a lack of trust between Clinton and her operatives, many of whom were former Obama staffers that she didn’t consider part of her inner circle of trust.

Her advisers were also frustrated by having to play roles they hadn’t been hired for and were ill-suited for. From the beginning, Benenson was frustrated that he was forced to split his time between defending his boss on emails and defining a path for her candidacy. Clinton, meanwhile, longed for a chief strategist in the Mark Penn mold who could take on a more expansive role than playing pollster.

Insiders said the problem remains her message. “The message is, she’s fighting. She’s fighting for you,” said one ally. “We have to drive that.”

The problem is Obama. The only thing to recommend Hillary in 2016 is the “she’s lying” defense. “She’s lying” is not a defense, it is a condemnation. Everyone can see Hillary is lying, lying, lying. She knows Obama is a disaster. But Hillary continues to lie about how good Obama is and how much she wants to be the Obama third term.

When Hillary stops lying we will write nicey nice. Hillary will only start to tell the truth when she dumps Joel Benenson. Joel Benenson must go, as a first step. Then the heads of every Obamaroid must roll.

Robbie Mook also has to go. It’s clear the leak comes from a Mook fan. Mook is responsible and his pretty head must roll.

Also, for those angry with our honest and dead on target genius analysis, note how this article uses the word “muddled” about the Hillary message. Reread our “Muddled Message Mess” from years ago to see how on target we are.

The Democratic Party seems to think that the white working class is composed of a bunch of racist Christian rednecks that must be turned into an insignificant minority, thus the open border policy Obama so badly wants with Mexico as well as admitting as many Muslims into the country given their much higher birthrates.

Hillary2016 is not a campaign. Hillary2016 is an embarrassment.
================================================================
It is painful to read, but the truth often hurts. I agree, and think it is too late.

I was just going to post the article about Heads will roll, when I noticed a new thread, and saw you commented on it here, Admin.

I couldn’t agree more:

The entire experience made her a deeply vulnerable frontrunner out of the gate, and underscored a lack of trust between Clinton and her operatives, many of whom were former Obama staffers that she didn’t consider part of her inner circle of trust.

The Clinton’s need to chop off the Obot heads and put in people they can trust.

Party opposition to Sanders is especially strong among Democratic officeholders. In FiveThirtyEight’s endorsement primary, Clinton has a lead over Sanders of 466 to 2. Although endorsements themselves may not matter much in swaying voters, they’re an indication of the depth of party support, which will likely translate into a substantial edge for Clinton among the 712 superdelegates at the Democratic convention unless she stumbles badly in the primaries.

Sanders and his supporters see the party support for Clinton as evidence that “the establishment” is against him. But there are two other interpretations. What party leaders necessarily care about is winning the next election. They look at the electability of the presidential candidate as it affects the electoral prospects of candidates at all levels, including their own. The endorsement primary is a symptom of deep anxiety about what Sanders would do to the entire party’s fortunes in November.

As we stand here in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, and survey the latest iteration of the miracle of 1776, and the two great political parties which are an object lesson to the world, an inspiration to all, true servants of the American People, it is worth noting the values which each of those parties

2. Republicans: let them eat cake, defer to their betters, and watch us perform Failure Theater*.

The search by the working class had become a diaspora, until Trump came along.

*I think the white Oscar should go to bullet bob corker, and stick that diamond stick pin of his up his imperial ass. The black Oscar should go to McConnell, as he serenades his donors. Both deserve the nation’s heart felt thank for defending the nation against Obama, and fulfilling their promise to stop him dead in his tracks.

Admin:
Saturday’s GOP debate has pretty much confirmed that Donald J. Trump will win the Granite State. Donald J. Trump will win in New Hampshire after the tainted loss in Iowa.

I wish I could be so positive. I keep hearing 40-50% of NH voters haven’t made up their minds. That could play out in so many different scenarios. My fear is the top 5/6 (Trump, Kasich, Rubio, Bush, Cruz, Christie) all come in bunched-in at the top. Again, I do not believe polls.
Because I am not active in any campaign, It is hard to get an idea of what is being seen and felt on the street. People at work have been pretty quiet.
Let’s just hope the voters don’t “play it safe” with an establishment GOPer. If NH voters have the guts, they’ll vote for Trump. If not, we’re screwed.

But at Trump’s rallies in New Hampshire days ahead of the first-in-the-nation primary, it’s not too difficult to find ex-Obama supporters in the crowds. These individuals say they are once again drawn to the promise of change. But the version they’re seeking now is grounded less on optimistic idealism, and more on something harder and angrier: sheer strength and force of will.

Gary Chagnon, a machinist from Barnstead, voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. He recently submitted an absentee ballot for Trump, and said he was drawn to Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

“We don’t need hope and change,” Chagnon, 50, said. “We need somebody with a set of balls, so to say.”

If this jackal Rich Lowery of NRO and his fellow RINOs are too blind and oblivious to realize that with 95 million Americans of working age not working, and 17% of the jobs in this nation held by illegals, and they need Trump to help them understand that they have a problem with the working class- then they have no business ruling the country, or pontificating on how it should be ruled. They need to go commit Hari Kari because they have dishonored themselves, the party and the nation.

Admin: I think what we have here is a site for independent voters. We are not dependent on what either party says, because we know it is all just eye wash. We do not believe that the Republican Party stands for limited government any more than we believe the Democrat party stands for working people. At one time, they did, but that was a long time ago. Today, we have one party, the uniparty, the party which is run by degenerate dissolute globalists and billionaires.

foxyladi14
February 8, 2016 at 4:13 pm
The reason the working class lobe trump is simple.
He is one of us.
Yes he is rich, but he did it by hard work.
It is the American way. 😀
——————
He respects average Americans.

I do not think the polls are so far off. I think the system is rigged. Voter fraud, as we think of it, such as illegal immigrants with drivers licenses, is bad enough, but the electronic fraud is the big time stuff. I think the guy who put up that OpenLetterToDonaldTrump.com has some really good ideas about how it is done. Just read this: http://openlettertodonaldtrump.com/exposing-the-votescam-syndicate/

——-
What makes them imbeciles is their failure to realize that their wealth, their status, and their peace of mind depends on a willingness by others to “play the game, play it out, not give up, not decided the game is rigged, and not chase the money changers from the temple, and not burn them at stake . . . that realization should make them think twice about letting greed be master of reason. There is that thing called a tipping point, where the people rise up and call bullshit on the entire system. It happened in Rome when the yeoman class accepted a draft of 25 years, secure in the notion that when they returned home after the foreign wars that their estates would be secure, only to find that the ruling class had decided they could get wheat cheaper from the foreign venues which left the yeoman class, the backbone of Rome, in an impoverished state where the refused to defend the corrupt system any longer and joined the ranks of the long term unemployed, the group whose orbit is not accounted for in that magic 5% figure that the forgotten Obama now does his victory lap to celebrate. It is as phony as he is. I do not worry about us . . we are old, and most of us have left the battlefield and become spectators. We will huff and puff but accept whatever fate hands down, all 68 million of us. The impetus for change will come sure as day follows night, but as with all revolutions it will come from the young and the middle class. The very people against whom the current system is most rigged.

Just got in on near the end of a segment on FOX tonight, they are covering for little Marco..zipping away from his robotic memorized talking points that Christie and all of us have noticed to the words he was saying over and over BECAUSE it was his talking points…it’s Obama’s fault and all Obama. That’s not what Christie was complaining about…nice twisting FOX.

And some cheesy looking pundit was saying that Christie had repeated himself…some months ago or some such. Oh, for Heaven’s sake. The establishment RINO troops are out in force to cover for their little guy.

I am glad I am a working woman that is way past 50, someone that will not be around for decades and I won’t have to watch campaigns won by anyone that will promise free everything to the twenty somethings, for their vote.

I admire you Shadowfax. I was raised by a single Mom (dad dropped dead of a massive heart attack at 42 when my sister was 8 and I was 4). My sister overdosed at 16 and drowned under mysterious circumstances. . Mom worked until she was 72 and sacrificed everything so I could go to college and law school. She is now 86 with alzheimers and I take care of her now. Mom was a strong, overworked, under paid woman and a pioneer in many ways. Mom was a life long democrat and she would be beyond horrified if she saw what happened to her party. I too worry more for my kids than myself…it keeps me up at night.

I can’t even imagine what your mom went though as a single mom, loosing her mate and then loosing a child. I still have my siblings, so I can only imagine how hard that was for you.

I only have one son, with serious disabilities…going through many surgeries in hopes of making his life better. Was a widow at 24 and a second ex-husband that ended up after 6 years being beyond abusive.

I am still standing, fighting, working and trying to find joy in life. I am proud of the life I have lived and wish that things could have been easier, but like your mom, making life better for our children is what drives us.

JB, I know you are going through tough times with your mother. My father died from a surgeon’s mistake and was buried on my mother’s 30th birthday when I was five years old. I saw my mother struggle to find a job and work very hard to provide when most women were stay at home moms back in the 1950’s. My mother made less in the workplace because she was “the little woman”. She had to sew all our clothes because we could not afford bought clothes. I would have qualified for free lunches but Mother would have cut off her arm before she would have taken welfare. We did without other things but all bills were paid.

Your mother and mine were super women. I, too, took care of my mother for five years until she died a few days from 93 years old. Mother saw what was happening to our country. When she was in the hospital and they were suggesting she had dementia, she was asked if she knew what day it was and of course didn’t…she was she was in the hospital when days run together. Then gal questioning her looked at me and smirked as she asked, “Do you know who the president is?” Mother sat up straight, looked the gal in the eyes and said, “It is O’bummer and I didn’t vote for him either”! The gal was stunned and taken aback. I loved it. Before she died, my mother knew the bad direction our country was headed. In many ways, I’m glad she is not here to see the mess we are in now. I, too, worry about the next generation.

jbstonesfan
February 8, 2016 at 9:04 pm
Missed the Trump speech..Sanders rally ending playing Bowie!!!! These stupid kids will really think he is cool now!!!!
———-
Jb: he is not just cool. Cool is a passing fancy. Bernie is forever. Who else do you know who rails endlessly against the establishment, and has been a part of the establishment all his professional life? Who else do you know (besides Messiahobama) who has never run so much as a Kool-aid stand but is willing to tell the world what is wrong with the private sector? Who else do you know who rescued Andrea when she broke through a scrum of barbarians to get the story and almost fainted? Bernie is the perfect mixture of angry and avuncular with a delusional green olive shaken not stirred.

He may be all the things I said above, but he is symptomatic of the abject failure of the establishment to address the needs of the American People, the same way Trump is. The difference is Trump can execute whereas Bernie can howl at the moon like a lone coyote.

And I think a sizeable number of middle aged and older women remember the origins of our country and how things used to be (and also what feminism used to be about, ie, not this intersectionality which has taken all the force, direction, and commonsense out of the equation).

They are drawn to Trump, IMO, because of the direction Trump wants to take the country is one of his foci. And this ties into something Dot said earlier, IMO.

Dot said if Trump wins, there is hope for the old democratic party. If I read her correctly, she is saying that currently it is Trump and no longer the democratic party, who is appealing to white workers. So those people’s needs may now be met with Trump instead of ignored and/or made worse by another democratic administration.

I said a long time ago that Hillary joined Obama, and Trump was addressing what would have been her issues (but he knows more about business and negotiation). And that if Hillary flipped again, it would be Trump vs Trump with amnesty (Hillary).

So the younger generation, seem to have no clue to what this country was founded on. And they are drawn to free everything. *And* they’ve changed “feminism” to pole dancing, prostitution, and a focus on the environment, minority rights, etc, no longer focused simply on women and laws and societal attitudes.

So they’re having a love affair with Bernie (even though as an adult he said that when men and women have sex, she fantasizes being gang raped, and he fantasizes being part of the gang rape – which seems to say an awful lot about HIM).

So the article says that Hillary is not connecting with younger women, but for other reasons, I think she is having trouble with some older women, as well. Not speaking out about New Year’s Eve in Europe was horrendous. And as an article I posted yesterday said, women over 50 who are laid off have no one fighting for them. Although this applies to men as well, as the quoted story in admin’s post tragically shows.

Shadow, I’m not privy to why you feel uncomfortable, but I bet once you get to know people there you might feel more comfortable. Well, when I stop in, it’s very late at night, so I guess I don’t know who is there in the daytime or earlier evening or if it has changed in general. But they’re very definitely solid Hillary. Although I remember there is some diversity in terms of how far left or moderate in general the members are, but I don’t remember it ever being an issue.

I think I heard that NH voters have to vote party, but they have a huge % of independents, so it’s hard for them to predict what will happen. I think someone said something close to 40% are independents.

Remember the promises: enforcement first, no welfare, no food stamps, we’re going to have the strongest, toughest border security ever, and, of course, no amnesty– all of these claims, by the way, which are still on Mr. Rubio’s website…

And of course all of those claims were bogus: it gave welfare, it gave food stamps, there was no border security, there was no ‘border security first’… But one of the things that we noticed early on in the process was that Mr. Rubio’s Gang of Eight was meeting with all of the open borders special interests in America: whether it be the Chamber of Commerce, whether it be certain tech corporations, whether it be anti-enforcement groups like La Raza, etc. etc. or the White House, which had an office in the Senate to help push through the Gang of Eight bill, a fact that Mr. Rubio never mentions in his many interviews on Fox and elsewhere promoting the bill.

About a third of New Hampshire’s undeclared (i.e., independent) voters remain on the fence about which party’s ballot to pull on the Feb. 9 presidential primary, according to the latest WBUR poll released last week.

These independents are a relatively liberal group, hewing a bit more to a Democratic view of what issues matter most, and even identifying as Democrats more than Republicans. The rules of the New Hampshire primary allow independents to select either ballot, and their choice could still upend either the Democratic or Republican primary.

This undecided group is different than undeclared voters overall in New Hampshire, who actually skew Republican. But more Republican-leaning undeclared voters have already made their minds to try and make sense of the 12-way scrum the GOP primary has become. This leaves the group still sitting on the fence skewing a bit more to the left. They are 11 points more likely to call themselves Democrats than Republicans, and one in five does not identify with either party.

These assholes are not going without a fight. Axel-head flamed out spectacularly in the Labour elections in the UK last spring. Now all he can do is snipe from the sidelines as his marketing creation becomes the world’s most irrelevant man. The sooner Hillary scrapes “the Obama” off her shoe the better her campaign can function.

The lovely Obama friend Erdogan is caught threatening Europe openly with the onslaught of refugees if they don’t pay up on the blackmail. http://news.yahoo.com/turkeys-erdogan-threatened-flood-europe-migrants-greek-website-182204158.html
“We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses … So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?” Erdogan was quoted in the text as telling the EU officials.”
“It also quoted him as demanding 6 billion euros over two years. When Juncker made clear only half that amount was on offer, he said Turkey didn’t need the EU’s money anyway.”

OK. The EU is not going to put up with Erdogan’s shit anymore. The blackmail is exposed.

The conservative movement has a lot of ideas for improving the life of a typical coke-sniffer in Westport, Connecticut. Let’s call that man Jeffrey.

The movement wants to lower Jeffrey’s capital gains taxes. It also wants to lower corporate taxation, which intersects with his interests at several points. It wants to free up dollars marked for Social Security so they can be handed, temporarily, to Jeffrey’s fund-manager in-law, who works in nearby Darien. The movement has sometimes proposed giving Jeffrey a voucher to offset some of the cost of sending his daughter to school at Simon’s Rock. If his household income falls below $400,000, Marco Rubio would give him a generous tax credit for each of his offspring. The movement also constantly hectors universities and media outlets to consider ideological diversity. Jeffrey reads these agitations and thinks of his libertarian-leaning daughter.

And, if Jeffrey gives some money to conservative causes, figures in the movement will at least pretend to cheerfully listen to him as he says that the problem with Republicans is all these religious wackos and their pro-life nonsense. That stuff bothers his daughter. Privately, many of them would like to take Jeffrey’s advice.

The conservative movement has next to zero ideas for improving the life of the typical opioid dependent who lives in Garbutt, New York, outside of Rochester. Let’s call him Mike.

Maybe they will make a child tax credit refundable against payroll taxes for Mike. He could get a voucher for a private school, but there aren’t many around and he can’t make up the difference in tuition costs anyway. In truth, the conservative movement has more ideas for making Mike’s life more desperate, like cutting off the Social Security Disability check he’s been shamefacedly receiving. It’s fibromyalgia fraud, probably. Movement spokesmen might consent to a relaxation of laws against gambling near Mike’s congressional district, so that Mike can get a job dealing at a blackjack table. More likely Mike ends up on the wrong side of the table, losing a portion of the SSD check to Sheldon Adelson. Finally, the movement’s favorite presidential candidate would like to put American armed forces ahead of a Sunni army outside of Homs, Syria, to fight Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, and al Nusra simultaneously. Russia too, if they don’t respect a no-fly zone. Mike’s daughter will be among the first round of American women to get a draft card. Mike reads this news and thinks, “Your momma wears combat boots” used to be an insult.

If the conservative movement has any advice for Mike, it’s to move out of Garbutt and maybe “learn computers.” Any investments he made in himself previously are for naught. People rooted in their hometowns? That sentimentalism is for effete readers of Edmund Burke. Join the hyper-mobile world.

And if Mike runs into a conservative reporter outside a Donald Trump rally, that reporter will then take to the pages of his conservative news outlet and talk about Mike the way a family talks about a distant dementia-afflicted uncle on his deathbed in a jurisdiction where assisted suicide is legal. Officially there’s some concern expressed for the poor man’s sanity. But the undertone of the remarks comes across as “Couldn’t he just die already? We’ve got important things to attend to (in Syria, of course).” Who has time for trade protectionism?

A recent example of the official right’s condescension toward the suckers in Garbutt or Chicopee appeared in National Review Online last week, written by the whip-smart Kevin Williamson. For Williamson, the Donald Trump phenomenon is just one of these periodic rebellions of Buchananites in the party. Poor fellows, they need to be put down, without concessions.

The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency. [National Review]

Brave. Change the words “federal government” to “conservative billionaires” and “direct mail marks” and he could be describing the conservative movement itself. Like Sir Edmund Spenser writing on the wild Gaels of Ireland, Williamson accuses the poor savages of confusing benevolent administration with a conspiracy to humiliate and dispossess them. Where would they even find evidence that free trade has hammered their life prospects even as it granted them cheap plastic containers at Walmart? Or that immigration might be depressing their wages?

After excoriating these working-class Mikes — who may make up perhaps one fifth of the Republican Party — for playing patty-cake with white nationalists, Williamson offers some advice to the movement:

Conservatives should continue to appeal to these voters, addressing the better angels of their nature with policy solutions to their problems, which are not imaginary. Confronting the stupidity and snobbery that holds in contempt those Americans who do work that does not require a university degree would be welcome, too, and Marco Rubio was well-advised to do so in his disquisition on welders and philosophers.

But it is unlikely that such voters can ever be entirely assimilated into the mainstream of American conservatism, the universalism of which provides them no Them — and they want a Them, badly. [National Review]

You see, they suffer from Them and Us thinking, unlike us. The jerks.

I agree that Trump’s policies are insufficient, and I doubt Trump would be loyal to them anyway. But Williamson offers no suggestions either. He knows there are none that fit into the straightjacket orthodoxy of conservatism any more. All we can offer Mike is a gesture at Marco Rubio’s kind words for people like him. Let Mike eat tax credits. And after we call him a crypto-Nazi, he should come out and do the right thing: Turn out and help Marco Rubio ease the great burdens on the Jeffreys of the world.

So they’re having a love affair with Bernie (even though as an adult he said that when men and women have sex, she fantasizes being gang raped, and he fantasizes being part of the gang rape – which seems to say an awful lot about HIM).
———–
Bernie’s explanation was one for the ages:

Speaking of himself he said: just because there is snow on the roof does not mean there isn’t a fire in the fireplace.

To which I would say, because there is snow on the roof, the temperature between the ears is probably somewhere south of zero. Moreover, assuming arguendo that there is fire in the fireplace, which seems to me a debatable proposition, the heat from it never reaches above the neck.

Still, Bernie is the idol of millions, not because he can fix anything, indeed his solutions would only make things worse, but because he is not in the pocket of wall street–and there is something to be said for that. At the current stage in our history, we have a government of the elites, for the elites and by the elites, which is not exactly what Lincoln, that old dead white man talked about.

There is a guy named Larry Nichols who was part of the old Clinton machine in Arkansas, he did some of the dirty work, and has now turned on them. You can make your own assessment as to his credibility. The only reason I mention his name to you is because he claims that Republican voter eligibility requirements may disenfranchise millions of voters in closed primary states like for example Oklahoma or New Jersey where in order to vote in the Republican primary you must have registered as a Republican months before. He claims this is a Karl Rove trick to advantage the establishment, because if you do not register you can still vote, but your vote will not count. If this is true, then I am surprised that Roger Stone did not mention it because he knows more about the Republican system than Nichols who is a democrat. But if Nichols knows this then he must have picked up on it from Republican insiders. I am hoping it is not true, or even if it is, that they are forced to count those votes. If they do not, the public should tell the party that they will not vote for ANY republican for any office in that state. I would threaten them within an inch of their political lives, if they try to pull that shit, and if they persisted, I would bury them politically, and move toward a third party. If they are going to pull this kind of stuff in secret, and not let the public know in advance, then they are not a political party. They are a thugocracy.

The base of the party needs to tell the establishment we are sick of your rigged elections, sick of your failure theater when it comes to opposing Obama, and sick of seeing you advance the interests of your donors over those of the American People. You have crossed the line, and there is no living with it. You have fucked yourselves, and we aim to see that you are punished. We will vote against you from now on.

Is anyone else really tired of hearing that this candidate or that one has not spent the AMOUNT OF TIME IN THE STATE THAT NEW HAMPSHIRE REQUIRES if you want to win. Oh, really. How about the other states where we do not see candidates much less having them sitting down with us at a coffee shop?

Another reason why we either need to rotate who gets to vote first or ALL states vote on the same day in the primaries.

Shadowfax, SouthernBorn and JBStones…my heart goes out to each of you…life can be so hard and challenging and painful some times…losing a parent, sibling or spouse is very hard and in some ways that kind of pain never goes away it just gets buried deeper so you can get on with your life…I have great respect for each of you…

…it is telling that before I came here and read your comments I had been thinking of my own mother…this month will be six years since she passed…and she was my most favorite political partner and we would talk for hours about politics and had the very good fortune to go to the 1992 NYC Democratic Convention together and had a blast…we ran all over town to all the events and got to see Hillary and Bill speak up close and personal and all kinds of other events…what an thexciting xperience…

…yet, I was thinking as each of you seem to say, how disappointed my own mother would be to see the great Democratic party she loved so much turned into a lawless, far left, globalist entity…

…like some of us here I have voiced anger and disappointment with where we find ourselves but I have to say that today I am very sad for Bill and Hillary…
I am sad because they have been backstabbed by O and slimeball Axelrod…I am sad that Hillary took the path of least resistence and now is on a dead end street…

I am sad to see Bill looking rather frail…I worry about his health…and I worry that Hillary has some very tough days ahead

I do not want either of them to suffer or be hurt or “humiliated”…they still feel like beloved family…yet a bit estranged…

I am not sure Administration is in agreement with that statement, it was a posted article, that being said, I doubt he has been working day and night with the candles burning to the wick with details.
More of a big picture kind of guy that sets the agenda and delegates the details.

Foxy, please forgive me and my error…yesterday I was catching up on comments on the last thread and addressing your comments, especially that great clip of DT and also addressing Freespirit and a possilby misconstrued comment I made that upon rereading thought I hope she did not take it a certain way…sometimes when you write something and then see it and read it…what you meant can get lost in the translation…

and in trying to clear that up…admist all that was going on yesterday I made a boo boo and mixed my clarification to Freespirit and used your name…

So they’re having a love affair with Bernie (even though as an adult he said that when men and women have sex, she fantasizes being gang raped, and he fantasizes being part of the gang rape – which seems to say an awful lot about HIM).

I have to disagree with that Time article regarding what DT will do if he becomes President…I believe that DT has a deep seated psychological need to prove alot of things…and that with the death of his older brother and his failures…that contributed to giving him the drive to succeed and accomplish what he has thus far…along with growing up in Queens and being street smart…

…he is not giving specifics for a very specific reason…he does not want to show his hand…so he is giving an overall blueprint…i think part of his strategy is he has to first win the nomination and he still has a long way to go against very big odds against him…establishment, media, etc

and then there are the facts…why should he give all his specifics away so one of the “copycats” that Foxy tagged can just sweep in and steal them…and in addition…so early in the game…the media will pull apart every word he uses and slice and dice his ideas to slaw…

no Donald wants to be unpredicable…he has lots of time…and debates… ahead…particularly in the national/general debates, if he gets there…then his “specifics” will have full impact and be subject to compare and contrast against his national opponent…why telegraph and advertise it all now?

but my real disagreement with what Time says is that I do believe he will be for the working class…he will negotiate better trade deals…he will close our borders and make a hero’s attempt to stop the HEROIN and other drugs from waltzing in over our open border and ending up in American’s arms to their death…

and I do believe he will take a businessman’s approach to get rid of Ocare and redesign the partners who will make up a better health care approach…

that is the big difference we get with Donald Trump…he will take a businessman’s approach and pay close attention to how and why our money is spent…he will make alot of enemines that lose their gravy train…but I think the ‘American people’ will finally start coming out ahead…

it will take time, it will not all happen at once and it will not be easy or perfect…but I do not think he is bluffing on what his intentions are if he wins…

“I agree that Trump’s policies are insufficient, and I doubt Trump would be loyal to them anyway.”

—-
I couldn’t agree more.
——
Shadow, those are not admins words.

They are a throw away line from an article by a writer named hickory dickorie Daugherty.

The thrust of his article is that the Republican elites are contemptuous of the working class.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.

So they’re having a love affair with Bernie (even though as an adult he said that when men and women have sex, she fantasizes being gang raped, and he fantasizes being part of the gang rape – which seems to say an awful lot about HIM).

——-
WTF, Bernie is the one that said that???
—-
Yea, and Admin mentioned it earlier on.

S
I am sad to see Bill looking rather frail…I worry about his health…and I worry that Hillary has some very tough days ahead

I do not want either of them to suffer or be hurt or “humiliated”…they still feel like beloved family…yet a bit estranged…

——
That’s sweet S, and what a thrill it must have been to go with your beloved mom to the convention. Sorry for your loss.

I too worry about Bill’s fragility, and wonder how much of it’s from this vegan diet 😉 Better for his heart, tho’.

Bill and Hillary are doing what they love to do best, many of us would not put up with this backstabbing and stress, and work for a man that stabbed us in the back, but to them…they just stand back up and keep fighting.

Bill wouldn’t be out there putting his heart into Hillary’s campaign if it wasn’t the most important thing to both of them.

This is one thing I love about them, they never give up no matter how difficult the task, and they are such a strong couple.

I still don’t like their position on immigration, never did, but I sure respect them both, more than anyone since JFK.

I highly recommend the radio interview link which appears at the bottom of the article.
——
Pat Caddell: Voters ‘Are So Angry,’ They ‘Want Their Country Back’

by DAN RIEHL9 Feb 2016Washington, DC1,016

Veteran pollster Pat Caddell joined Breitbart News Daily host Stephen K. Bannon today to discuss the volatile 2016 race in both the Democratic and Republican parties and make predictions for the evening’s final results.

Speaking of voters, said Caddell, “They are so angry … I shouldn’t just say angry, they are so alienated from their government in a democracy … they are so believing in the corruption, numbers in the eighty-percentile and higher, they believe the country is in decline and the political class” just doesn’t care.

Citing voter’s concerns for both themselves and their children’s futures, said Caddell, “They have really disdained both political parties now.” Caddell said the great American middle has become about 60 percent of the electorate who vote non-partisan and want “real change.”

“And they want their country back,” he added. “This is the swells versus the American people,” he added. “when you get to economics it’s the ‘global citizen types’ who believe in free trade – it’s all great for them – and the rest of the people in this country who are really taking it in the neck when it comes to jobs and wages.”

Caddell pointed out that only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)16%
and Donald Trump are willing to say that they see that America is in decline, which Caddell feels resonates with approximately 80 percent of American voters today. As for Trump invoking a populism and nationalism that perhaps runs contrary to the traditional Wall Street-aligned view held by the Republican establishment, “Trump has essentially borrowed the Republican Party to run for president and they don’t much like it,” he said.

When asked if he was concerned about the suggestion that Republican front-runner Donald Trump comes with an authoritarian streak that should give Constitutionalists pause, caddell said he knew Trump personally and wasn’t concerned. He cited the administration of Andrew Jackson as one in which the American people took their government back for themselves, as opposed to the “swells” mentioned above as perhaps a more fitting comparison.

The entire Breitbart News Daily interview with pat Caddell can be heard below.

Last I saw BC was in 2008 in Austin, Tx..He was frail then, very, very rudy complexion. I thought he needed to use some bare minerals, really, it was like he was glowing red
His handshake however was so sweet, he held my hand at least 20 seconds and I don’t think he may have seen really as the girls 90 the front row, I was in second row standing, we’re all over him, getting their pics taken.
A handshake tells you something about a person. I remember telling many people about it.
Hate to say Hillary was quick, very.

No surprise, but good to hear that wiser heads seem to be prevailing in Washington.

Here is the hot news today, from CNN:

Washington (CNN)Top U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that ISIS was likely to attempt direct attacks on the U.S. in the coming year and that the group was infiltrating refugees escaping from Iraq and Syria to move across borders.

ISIS “will probably attempt to conduct additional attacks in Europe, and attempt to direct attacks on the U.S. homeland in 2016,” Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was also at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, estimated that violent extremists were active in about 40 countries and that there currently exist more terrorist safe havens “than at any time in history.”

Clapper warned that ISIS and its eight branches were the No. 1 terrorist threat, and that it was using the refugee exodus from violence in Iraq and Syria to hide among innocent civilians in order to reach other countries.

Clapper said ISIS was “taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow,” adding that they were “pretty skilled at phony passports so they can travel ostensibly as legitimate travelers.”

Syrians trickling in so far!

As we reported the other day, the Syrian flow into the US is going extremely slowly and I’m guessing there are some in Washington who are trying to keep America safe. At the present rate, there is no way Obama will get 10,000 Syrians in here by the end of this fiscal year on September 30th. (Unless those UPS flights are for real

$365,694,500,000: U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit With China Hit Record in 2015

(CNSNews.com) – The merchandise trade deficit that the United States ran with China in 2015 hit a record high of $365,694,000,000, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The $22,615,700,000 increase in the merchandise trade deficit the U.S. ran with China last year was a 6.6-percent jump from the $343,078,800,000 merchandise trade deficit the U.S. ran with China in 2014.

Six days ago, as his 2016 rivals scavenged from the carcass of Rand Paul’s failed bid, Donald Trump’s New Hampshire co-chairman sat down with several prominent Paul supporters at the State House in Concord.

The group, which included state Reps. Eric Eastman and Max Abramson, was eager for Trump to earn their support by going on the record against Medicaid expansion, an issue that comes before the New Hampshire Legislature this week. Conversations with the campaigns of Trump’s rivals had paid dividends: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz delivered detailed, on-video condemnations of state Medicaid expansion in response to questions at local events.

Trump’s state chair, Andrew Hemingway, said he thought he could get his boss to weigh in at a rally Thursday in Portsmouth, according to a person at the meeting.

But the next night, Trump took a pass. “I want to get rid of Obamacare and get you something great,” Trump vaguely offered. “We have some people that won’t be able to live. We have to help people. Don’t we have to help? What are we going to do, let them die in the street?”

One of the Paul supporters messaged Hemingway: What gives? The mogul’s state co-chair replied with an electronic shrug; he doesn’t write Trump’s speeches.

Trump lost those endorsements to Cruz. And it wouldn’t be the last time the New York billionaire’s insistence on running the campaign on gut instinct would cost him in the final stretch to today’s primary. Despite a poll-defying loss in the Iowa caucuses a week ago that halted his momentum, Trump is disregarding his aides’ advice and yielding only slightly and ever so grudgingly to the typical demands of a White House bid.

**********************

what’s wrong with that?

good for Donald…if he cares more about helping the people than depriving them of Medicaid…

just shows me he is an independent and not going to tow the establishment party line..

and as I said, Iowa and NH are in no way representative of the rest of the USA, this is in no way telling us anything, we didn’t know…..far left liberals…..it all changes from this space forward as we learned in 2008.

In New Hampshire, 10 counties count the vote in the open at the neighborhood polling place (the constitutional way), and 10 counties “count” the vote via secret computer program (the illegal way). However the 10 counties that are computerized “count” 80% of the NH vote, while the 10 counties that still do it by hand-count only count 20% of the NH vote.
—
In New Hampshire, for instance, 80% of the voters who are “voting” on computerized systems do have the right to cast a ballot. So far, so good. But, after they cast their ballots, the ballots are whisked away for processing in the “behind closed doors” computer rooms. The “count” is announced later that night. No candidate, citizen, or local press person is allowed to see any actual ballots on election day, or for weeks thereafter. So the voters and the nation are taking these election “results” in such computerized elections ON AN ACT OF FAITH, with no evidence.